At any rate, five elk, two moose, five black bear, five whitetail deer and three antelope hunts were available, plus one bighorn sheep hunt that Xoutdoors.com persuaded FNAWS to sell by telephone auction. Xoutdoors.com claimed to have an "un-voidable" contract with the Blackfeet to offer these hunts for a five-year period.
Well, talk about a dot.com wash-out! Seems the much-touted sheep hunt never took place because no sheep ever wandered down out of Glacier National Park onto reservation lands. Fortunately, none of the $36,000 that was paid for the hunt ever got transferred to Xoutdoors.com, or to the Blackfeet. As for the results of the other hunts, they were nothing to get excited about, according to Ira Newbreast of the Blackfeet Fish and Game Department
Newbreast says Xoutdoors.com has "alienated" a lot of tribal members and "probably" won't be allowed to sell any more hunts for the reservation, no matter what kind of contract they have with the reservation. Newbreast says the main source of problem was Xoutdoors.com's decision to use a single, low-price tribal outfitter, rather than spread the work around to a number of tribal members. The decision went down so hard among tribal members it is not clear at this point whether any hunts at all will be open to the public next year, no matter who offers them. "Xoutdoors.com can come on the reservation and sue us in tribal court if they don't like it," Newbreast........(continued)
